7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (August 13)

A surprise return and good builds, but wheel-spinning drags show down.

Dean Ambrose Wwe
WWE.com

Raw delivered its go-home show for the biggest PPV of the season, SummerSlam, Monday night, providing a strong build to its major matches, but it wasn’t all upward trajectory.

The program featured a lot of wheel-spinning segments – matches involving wrestlers who aren’t on the card at SummerSlam, in angles that have sputtered for weeks on Raw, with no progression or resolution in sight. One or two of these time-filler blocks is fine, but when you start racking and stacking them up, it really detracts from the show’s momentum.

Still, Raw managed to deliver on its top two title matches, and drop a surprise return into our midst. That alone merits some kudos and made for a watchable episode. SummerSlam is shaping up to be an intriguing card, although it’s so loaded that it’s also possible that a lot gets lost during the course of Sunday night.

One of the brighter spots Monday night came in the form of a shakeup on the commentary team, with one member being out and a familiar face put into the slot. Whether this is temporary or the new norm remains to be seen, but it was a definite upgrade.

With that said, let’s find out what delivered the goods and what missed the mark. Let’s get to it…

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Contributor
Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fortunately became a fan in time for WrestleMania III and came back as a fan after a long high school hiatus before WM XIV. Monday nights in the Carlson household are reserved for viewing Raw -- for better or worse.